How to get high-quality electricity from a generator

The article discusses one of the possible solutions to the problem with not very high-quality voltage produced by many household generators.

Many who faced the need to use gas or diesel generators during a power outage probably noticed that some devices do not work from electricity generated by the generator.

We received a letter from our regular reader on our site, here is a quote from this letter: ....... "Household generators are mainly brush-mounted, therefore the quality of the generated electricity, to put it mildly, does not correspond to the powered devices. In particular, computer UPSA, when switching to autonomous power, begins to "swear." Are there any filters that make the sine wave more digestible? "" .......

As one smart person said, a correctly asked question contains half the correct answer. In order to understand the reason, it is necessary to understand a little the device of the generator, how it works, where its weak point is, why some devices do not “see” the electricity generated by the generator.

The fact is that many electrical appliances are particularly sensitive to the quality of the supplied electricity, to be precise, they, devices, are sensitive to the quality of a sinusoid. If the electricity supplied from the network is relatively stable, then the electricity received from the generator, unfortunately, cannot be said. This is especially true for budget generators.

In many ways, the quality of the output voltage depends on the generator speed. Almost all modern generators are equipped with an automatic voltage regulator. But the fact is that this device is able to regulate and maintain only the voltage at the required level, but it is not able to regulate and produce a pure sine wave. More expensive models of generators are already equipped with electronics that control the quality of the output voltage.

Particularly sensitive to low-quality electricity are some types of heating boilers, almost all uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) computers.

This is due to the fact that in these devices, the microprocessor monitors the quality of the supplied electricity. So he’s just "swearing" for low-quality electricity. For many devices, not only stable voltage, but also the shape of a sinusoid is of great importance. Unfortunately, most household generators are not able to produce electricity of the required quality, with the correct sinusoid, without any "noise" and harmonics.

In order for devices that need high-quality voltage to function normally and fully and not to fall into an accident, there are Surge Protectors double conversion. The voltage and shape of the sine wave at the output of the device does not depend on voltage, the shape of the sine wave, noise in the network, etc. The output of the device is always a CORRECT sine wave and a STABLE voltage.

The principle of operation of this device is based on double conversion of the input voltage. If you describe the principle of operation of the device simply, without going into the jungle of electronics, then in this device there are two converters, two steps. At the first stage, the input voltage is rectified to direct voltage, at the second stage, the direct voltage is converted to alternating voltage.

Control over the operation of the device is carried out by a microprocessor, which instantly responds to any change in parameters, both at the input and at the output of the device.Thus, a voltage is achieved with a pure sinusoid, without any “noise”, to which the UPS of computers are so sensitive, the electronic part of the “smart” boilers.

Such devices are relatively inexpensive. For example, a voltage stabilizer, designed for instrument power up to 500 watts, costs about $ 150-200. Such devices are manufactured in small enterprises in limited batches. So far, we have not observed any imported analogues of this device in our market.

Read also:Generator Safety

Sergey Seromashenko